Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

The ex-Rothbury Fest rages into a successful first year with hippie help

By Joanie Faletto

Published: Monday, July 11, 2011

Updated: Monday, July 11, 2011 07:07

Not even two minutes into the first conversation I had with a campground neighbor, he had figured me out. "So, you don't do any drugs at all?" He sat across from me at my plastic, fold-up picnic table and shuffled his ruler around atop an iPhone-sized sheet of acid. He nodded. "That's cool."

And so the tone of my weekend at the Electric Forest music festival was set. We were continuously vulture-style circled by drug peddlers, but nothing was ever forced down our throats, up or noses, on our tongues, in our lungs, whatever. Roving hippies wove around campsites, "Need any moon rocks?" Uhh, nope. "Awesome, enjoy your festival, ladies!" Thanks… Shouldn't NASA be keeping tabs on that kind of stuff?

At one point, my fest companion and I were even offered "cookies" (probably not Pillsbury) and "party favors" (likely not streamers and balloons). Some other notable commodities available for purchase and in demand included "nuggets," "doses," molly, "bud," "liquid," DMT, opium, "X," shrooms, "pharmies," and other nonsense language. Here's me, a D.A.R.E. graduate, thankyouverymuch, scratching my head.

Our Jersey-born, acid-vending neighbor was a knowledgeable source, never condescending and perpetually patient with my insatiable journalist's curiosity ("Is there special paper you have to use? What if you took that whole sheet at once? How much money are you expecting to make from that?" "No. You'd go insane. About $1,000.") Once I exhausted my LSD inquiries, we discussed the music. To my pleasant surprise, acid-vendor was equally as informed and even more so excited about the festival's lineup. My unspoken question was answered: No, this is not just a 4-day, $200+, hallucinogen-binge getaway void of indoor plumbing. Color me relieved.

He was specifically amped for the String Cheese Incident, as was the majority of the population. With double sets on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, String Cheese unofficially, but kind of officially, owned the Michigan festival formerly known as Rothbury. Those not particularly enthralled by the concept of three days of Cheese-filled evenings were the dub steppers. Still, the overlapping middle of that Venn diagram bridging the gap between hippies and bass heads was significant. I'd like to thank each genre's fondness of drugs for this joint tolerance (pun a little bit intended).

DAY ONE: The lightning encore

Thursday night, after the several-hour wait in the rain to get inside and settled in your small camping plot, kicked off the festival at 5:30pm. Rain still ever-pouring. Kyle Hollingsworth Band and Kaskade played that night during troubling bouts of lightning under a sky that was a color that would motivate families to vacate window-ridden, upstairs rooms. Lotus closed out the cold night at a relatively early 1:45 a.m., but the lightning show raved on.

DAY TWO: Better late than never

The first full day was chilly. Cue every attendee kicking themselves in the head for only packing swim trunks and crop tops. The drizzle was intermittent, but you know what? There were bands to see, friends to meet and hoops to hula. Chicago's own DJ duo, The Hood Internet, began their set with a grossly skimpy crowd. A foreign concept for anyone who's seen them around our neck of the woods (Wicker Park Fest ‘10, anybody?). By the time "Good Ol' Fashion Rumpshaker" came down, the crowd was sizeable and people were dancing. Out of pity? Maybe at first. This was no doubt a humbling set for our hometown fellows.

While the pothea-- er, hippies, were enjoying Stephen Marley, a substantial group had gathered for Chiddy Bang at the stage where The Hood Internet just wrapped up. Tick tock… a random man appeared on the stage: "Good news and bad news," he began, not a great way to start. "Good news is Chiddy Bang will go on at 8:45 (it was 6:30), bad news is their flight out of Chicago was cancelled so they're driving here now." The crowd dissipated, defeated, but returned in strong numbers for the performance as promised two hours later (despite Cheese playing at the same time on the main stage).

As with any show by the rapper+drummer duo, wordsmith Chiddy collected ten random topics from the audience and put together a freestyle rap. Some select topics were horse tranquilizers, whales and Wales. The freestyle wasn't just good for a teenager (because, yes, they're both teens), it was good for, like, Lil Wayne. The guys were worth the wait, and their impending album drop they made sure to mention seems like it might be too.

While Cheese powered through set number one, VibeSquaD offered some trippy, minimal beats for the dancing glowstick-wielders. All with a smile. He actually never stopped smiling.

Before the night's headliner, Tiesto, Galactic warmed up the bass while Electric Forest's only indoor stage was repopulated at midnight for the first time since the night before by a hoedown courtesy of Ann Arbor's Dragon Wagon. The festival was already set on the site of a no longer functioning summer camp (complete with a small lake, swings and rundown sand volleyball and tennis courts), but the cabin venue was a straight up end-of-camp Sadie Hawkins. No complaints here.

Tiesto on Friday night was the weekend's first taste of prime, dirty dubstep. It goes without saying that the lightshow was something else (staying consistent with the TRIPPED OUT lights and art scheme rigged up in the huge tree-heavy section of the forest). Vocab word of the night: rage (verb)- To aggressively dance to bass heavy, electronic music. Feel free to embellish that definition with drug references.

DAY THREE: Beastly bass, beat-drop dilemma

As the beginning of July is expected to be, things finally got hot. Not great for dirty campers and already questionable hippies. There was some "Freaker by the Speaker" from Keller Williams in the early afternoon, followed by ex-hairbanders desperately clinging onto relevance REO Speedwagon, who still actually sounded pretty damn good between stirring, lecture-y commentary on Middle Eastern conflicts.

Then again with the Cheese, or how the festies lovingly referred to them, "CHEEEEESE, MAN." They continued to show why they were, quote from a real hippie, "known for fun." The early morning ended after dub hero Bassnectar and hipsterly haircutted Skrillex dropped their finally beats. Bassectar, according to a real dub stepper, "absolutely killed it," while Skrillex "sounded like it was his first show ever." The young dubber got a little beat-drop happy. Novice mistake.

DAY FOUR: A pretty night

The bazillion-piece group Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes was the first real significant act of Sunday, another scorcher, by the way. The set was varied, well paced and interesting. Not to mention crowd-conscious; before the first song was over, front man Alex Ebert took his handheld mic and walked deep through the crowd smiling, hugging and taking pictures with fans. This was a small reminder that the camaraderie between hippies and electrodes was just as strong as the connection between the people on and in front of the stage. It was sweet, to say the least, as was "Home," the song everyone didn't mind waiting for (even though Ebert seemed a little irked when a fan said that was all he wanted to hear).

Switching gears was the Pimps of Joytime on a small, scarcely attended stage. The funk crew was fantastic fun, and the backup lady singer has got some pipes on her, letmetellya. Switching gears back to the main stage was, again, String Cheese, where the lazered, mainly instrumental jam session said its last goodnight. Thus, the stage vacated for Pretty Lights. Oh, Pretty Lights.

It could have been equal parts Pretty Lights main man Derek Smith and it being the festival's last hurrah, but the midnight raving and raging (refer back to day two for a refresher definition) was a hot mess. I mean that in the best way possible. Masses of glowsticks were shot in the air with every carefully placed beat-drop, and people were throwing fists (dancing, don't worry) in a way Mighty Joe Young might.

Whether you were assisted by a little LSD or not (aka everyone else and then me, presumably), we were all in the same place. Geographically, okay, sure. Physiologically, not… quite. But mentally, I would argue yes. During that last set, there was no trolling campsites for moonshine, or whatever it was. The economy of the festival-wide drug market did not exist for that hour and a half. This was the last big kick, and we were all there to soak it up. Like sun on your back, or, you know, acid on your tongue.

It all sounded really cool except for the fact that the guy was trying to make 1000 dollars off a sheet of acid. Unless he got it for free, he would've been selling it for more than 10 a hit.

Either way, the festival sounded really cool

--------------------"Ur cat died because he hated u" - Koods
"I hope JSB kicks your ass one day." - Vandago
"you are the biggest 'internet guy' I have ever come across"- Jokeshopbeard
"The more I see you post the more I realize you're just this fuckin tie dye loser who trolls the Shroomery 24/7." - Herbologist
"Sheekle you cannot vile the dice of bullshit you have posted on this forum over the years, I like databases" - thelastoneleft
"or maybe i just come from a blood line of superior intelligence" - trees

Quote:Sheekle said:It all sounded really cool except for the fact that the guy was trying to make 1000 dollars off a sheet of acid. Unless he got it for free, he would've been selling it for more than 10 a hit.

Either way, the festival sounded really cool

Yeah probably scored 2 sheets at $5 each and was going to flip them over the weekend at $10 each ($1000 investment return + $1000 profit)

I was at Electric Forest and it was amazing! I walked past that painted up VW bus many times during the festival. The article summed up the festival pretty goood.

I noticed that this is from a college newspaper and I hope it is only college kids that read these articles. This article makes Electric Forest look like a huge drug-fest and that doesn't need to be advertized to the general public. That's just going to bring negative energy to the festival. More cops and security, and more d-bags there just to score drugs. But if its only college kids reading this article I have no problem advertising EFF as a drug-fest because it pretty much is. It is all about the music tho, dont' go just for the drugs.

Quote:djr2150 said:

Quote:Tiesto on Friday night was the weekend's first taste of prime, dirty dubstep.

and the cops were awesome. they cleared us out of the forest at the end of sunday night while we were smoking and taking a few bumps and didn't say a thing, just asked us to leave. no doubt they knew what was up and just wanted to keep everything safe and orderly.